


Two-Toned Echoes Tumbling Through Time

by StormDriver



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Gen, Patch 5.0: Shadowbringers Spoilers, go crazy go stupid kids, why do i have to make everything MYSELF-, you can interpret this as platonic or shipping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-14
Updated: 2019-07-14
Packaged: 2020-06-28 01:35:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,711
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19802029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StormDriver/pseuds/StormDriver
Summary: The Wardens are slain at long last, but the Warrior of Darkness still can't find the rest that they need. So many ordeals, sacrifices and adventures they'd been on. They used to have someone who truly understood what they'd been through. But now the inn room feels so empty.FFXIV: Shadowbringers patch 5.0 spoilers included, tread warily.





	Two-Toned Echoes Tumbling Through Time

**Author's Note:**

> give me Ardbert or give me death
> 
> also please interpret this however you want, i myself have a really big crush on One (1) dumb midlander warrior and by the gods will i fulfill it however i can

(I was playing [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOQ5gb0PWHE) on loop the whole time I wrote it, have fun)

Mere hours would pass before I would question what befell us. How my journey led me here. How I’d grown to care for these people, enough to throw myself headlong into danger’s path, to take the bullets for them. Each had their own place in my heart. Yet I still cannot figure out how they each smuggled in there. What each of them are truly worth to me. How much I care for one over the other.

Mayhap none of them matter more than the other. They all have their own self-worth. Each their own reason to be loved. By me or by each other. And each have their own reason to love me. 

Time hardly passes the more I come to think about why they could possibly love me so much. They weren’t there whence the truth was revealed, I suppose. So they have no reason to be suspect of my shattered being. Of… of _their_ shattered beings. Who knows if it’s really them that love me? Maybe it’s their pieces that love me, and the true “them” would hate me beyond recognition. Maybe it’s the other way around and they only love this piece of “me,” and the moment I gain another piece back, they’ll turn.

I cannot be sure. This new light shed upon my life… No, _all_ the lives of _every_ being… We’re not who we used to be. None of us are who we’re supposed to be.

I care naught for what he told me. Before he gave into this cruel fate that we were tethered to from the beginning. I still remember bearing arms against him so very long ago, on the distant star that I call home. Him and his, coming into my home and running rampant, causing havoc for what they believed… No, what they were told would be the salvation of their world. 

His face was always so familiar to me, yet I could never point out why. When I looked upon him and the hard stare of unyielding passion, pride, and care set in those cold blue eyes… His own messy hair mirroring my own in some ways, even if I stood taller, or was a different race entirely. I could see some of myself in him, in the way he threw that axe with naught so much as a second’s hesitation. When he was told what he could to do help others, he did it without a second thought. And I can’t help but feel that, despite our “upbringings,” we were synonymous in that exact aspect.

I expect everyone who treads upon the ground beneath our feet to want to give back. But the lengths that he took. Casting aside his own body just for an attempt to undo his mistake. Being brought home and being forced to watch as the people he loved withered away under the looming threat of his choices. Where his own mind started to relapse and he gradually lost himself to the darkness that he so sought to restore to the land. For everything I notice about him, I notice in myself.

It should come as no surprise. What had that cloaked figure said again? That being was fully aware of its fleeting existence, and yet it seemed absolutely calm. While I sat there and waited for my turn, it asked to keep me company. I already had a friend with which to speak, and for some time, I thought myself the only capable of seeing him. Yet when I stood and walked on, it asked me if… someone else was there. And it was… right.

Yet he did not exuberate the same shock and joy whence he realized I could hear his voice, see his form. He only looked at me, and I to him. And we both realized what we were. Who we were. Who we are. Who I am. 

Even now, when I realize the worst of this tale has passed, at least until the next Hellish nightmare rears its head unto my path, I still find myself feeling the utmost of guilt. I’ve no memories of that past life I lived. Of who I was told I used to be. What I am supposed to be. Only that I am incomplete. My pieces… My selves, lie scattered across the worlds. I just happen to be the most put together of any of them.

If the realm is made up of fourteen shards, where I lie as the first fragment in the Source, and there have been seven Rejoinings… Seven souls have I brought into mine own. Seven souls with which I unwillingly stole their lives away and put them back in their “proper” place. 

And one more soul added into this collection I hold inside me. His soul. His life becoming a part of mine. Sometimes, when I am alone with just my thoughts, in the utter silence of the night or an empty dream, I swear that I can hear him in those depths, speaking to me again. Gods, how I’ve grown to miss his voice. _Our_ voice.

I awaited returning home with each of my friends, but I have been told that I am still the only one capable of traversing the rift fully. I tend to be special like that, Gods know why. I always did wonder why I might be so special as to receive Her blessing. With every step forward, I think I’ve started to figure it out. For I am not just me. I am someone else. And I’m also another. I’m this person and that one. I am… all of these people come together. And his soul is now here to be a part of me, as well.

This would be the first time I might be fully aware of how I will change. That’s my initial theory, at least. The souls inside me, shaping me as a person, melding unto each other and warping who I am and how I think. The first time it might have happened was almost six years ago. When that damned wyrm wrought havoc on the world I call home. It only makes too much sense. Six years ago, I don’t think I remember who I was back then. I don’t feel I remember what I was just _one_ year ago. 

It was sure to happen again. His soul would wreak havoc on mine, stitched together by innocent and stolen others, and change it again. And when the next calamity comes around, another soul will change me again. Until I become… something… No, _someone_. I will become someone else, eventually.

No one knows this truth but me and the Exarch. After all, he was there whence I stood and spoke. Beaten and covered in his own blood, a bullet struck through his shoulder and his clothes tattered. The crystal ever stretching and claiming his skin, even if it was slowly. The face of a friend and a voice I realized I could never forget. One friend that I would surely trust with my whole life. 

I act as a messenger between my world and this one. I’ve come to know this world as a good home. It is the closest to home I have, where all my friends, aside from a few, wait here for me to return with news. I am asked to go out to visit them rather than call them to the tower. I can respect such, they all must have lives they would wish to continue here. For as long as they need to, that is. I can name one such person who is all too eager to return home and ensure no one has poked and prodded his body during its long slumber. 

A home that, even though I am happy to return to, I feel so much guilt walking through the front doors. 

I visit home less and less often. I can feel his sorrows in my own heart. How much he wishes he could be with his home. And so I heed his wishes and I spend more and more time in the First. When the others started asking why I rarely go back anymore, it becomes increasingly trying not to spill the truth. Not to tell them that I can’t bring myself to go home anymore, lest his own sorrows overrun my whole being. 

Maybe this is how I will change. He will make me wish to be in this world more than my own. And if I wish to go to mine own, I will only feel sorrow. It will soon become less his, more mine. My own sorrow, to ignore a home that I hadn’t visited in over a hundred years. A world where my own countrymen would commit suicide to stop themselves from turning into demons. Where all I can do is run about as a shade of my former self and beg for death already. Until someone comes along and says… they can see me. 

Days grow longer. I don’t go out much during the day, even if the best times to hunt are then. I leave my windows wide open at night and I take deep breaths of the cool air. I gaze upon those stars. Maybe to make up for how much he has missed seeing the night sky. Let his soul see what it so desperately wanted to know would one day be restored to its world. I guess that’s one thing I don’t feel guilty about: the Light running rampant in this world is gone. All that remains are the painful shades of those we’ve already lost. 

When I am tasked with leaving the Crystarium to take care of disposing the devils, I can feel his heart tugging my mind. He can sometimes recognize the creatures I vanquish. He feels horrible to bear witness to what he did to them. And sometimes, when I hesitate to swing my sword, someone has to shake my shoulder and ask why there are tears slipping down my cheeks. 

I’ve begun crying during missions. I’ve yet to fall to my knees and start sobbing. But at times, when I am in the most gruesome fights, I am told that nearby soldiers could hear my desperate wails and feel the utmost of sullen fury. Sometimes, they would say it is no different from a battle cry. Other times, they worried there was an infant of a child hosting my body rather than the brave Warrior of Darkness they expected. 

Is it bad that I feel this way? No. I’ve decided it is only right that I feel Ardbert’s pain. I had no right to take his soul. No right to deprive him of what little remained of his life. His individuality and his entire existence have been erased from the surface of this world. The people remember him as a heathen that wrought the calamity that would cost the rest of the planet and millions of lives besides. But I remember him as a hero. 

As…

As myself. 

I can’t help but hit myself across the face once this thought passes my mind. This was the longest I’d ever thought about this, and I could feel my mind spiraling into the existentialism. I’d come into my room to escape the guilt plaguing my thoughts, yet it only grew stronger once I was alone. Once I had nothing to distract me but my own heart.

The rooms in the Crystarium are well-suited for long-time stay. I have my own room that I gladly house in whenever I come to stay. The table rich with select fruits and my own journals and writings waiting on my desk. The window is always shut when I arrive, but I leave it open when I am here.

Outside that window, all I can see is the night sky. Stars glistening on the horizon where the rocks and water curve. Where an island waits and another city beneath its waves remains hidden. Where the mountain will one day fall and the lamps will one day flicker out. The guilt of it all still overwhelms me.

I roll over in bed and grab the sides of my head. My knees are pulled up to my chest and I close both eyes, glaring at the vissages in my head. Faces I feel I should recall. Memories that do and don’t belong to me.

“Stop it…” I groan, my hands tightening harder over my head, teeth gritting harder and voice growing rougher. “Please, I’ve seen enough of this.”

Yet I haven’t seen enough.

This is just one life.

One soul I took into myself.

The other seven still wait to be recognized inside me. 

“I don’t need to be reminded…!” My voice barks.

Who am I to take their lives from them?

They who will never get to see their homes ever again?

Is this why I’m an adventurer?

“No, it’s not…” 

I traverse any lands I can find, in search of their homes.

“ _I_ do this to help others. Because I want to.”

Because I feel guilty?

“No!”

I feel the wrongdoings of my past.

“It’s not my fault!”

**_But you have yet to try to listen to them._ **

“...”

**_They’re right here… Why don’t you try to talk?_ **

“I can’t…”

**_Because you’re scared of them. Of what they’ll say._ **

“I don’t know them.”

**_How can you not know them? They’re you, aren’t they?_ **

“I don’t even know who I am anymore.” 

**_Well… pretenses aside, you’ve always come off a great listener to me. I haven’t been here for too long, but I can already tell how much you care about your friends._ **

My eyes snap open. I feel choked up hearing his voice. But with so much clarity that I could never mistake it for anyone else’s. That was him speaking. His words. 

“You… you’re talking…”

**_Aye. What of it?_ **

“I didn’t… I thought you were gone.”

**_Heh. I thought the same thing nearly a hundred years ago. Then you came walking in._ **

I blink once, trying my best to register his presence. I roll over and look towards the window to the outside, the table decked with delicacies, my own journals and notes. But I don’t see him standing there. 

“Where are you?”

He didn’t say any words, yet he made a sound akin to only shock and confusion. Like a child was choking on their water.

**_Reckon you would’ve known? It was you who took my axe and used it against that devil._ **

The moment comes back to me. When he handed me his blood-stained weapon as I spilled light from my lips. The light pouring in around... _us,_ threatening to consume everything _we_ strove to protect.

I smile at the memory. “I never got thank you for that.”

**_The thanking should be going to you. You’re the bloody fool that fought Hades to save my world._ **

“Yeah, and I told you I couldn’t do it by myself.”

**_I… guess I can take a little credit. But you were the real hero. Well, still are._ **

“You played as much a part in that as anyone else.”

**_I was meaning to ask, actually: those others that the Exarch summoned… Did you know them?_ **

My face twitches. Those people that stood by me… Who helped to pick me up when I fell, where I leaped in to take the bullets for them.... Did I even ask them their names?

My eyes squint. “No. I didn’t.”

**_Not a single one?_ **

I glance over at the wall. “He said ‘champions beyond the rift.’ They must’ve been from other worlds.”

**_...Other shards._ **

Was I sure I didn’t know them?

**_Quite a treat. They were powerful warriors. Rivaled even you._ **

Those seven… They who answered the call.

**_Makes you wonder who they’re supposed to be in their own worlds._ **

I roll back over and press my face into the pillow. Please, no.

**_What that Ascian had said…_ **

Please. No.

**_You don’t think they were…_ **

Don’t say it.

**_The other pieces… perhaps?_ **

I don’t say anything. I don’t want to say anything. I don’t want him to speak or any other soul to voice their concerns. 

**_Oi, you alright? I know you’re not much of a talker, but you can’t leave me holding this conversation._ **

I can hear the little laugh in his voice, as he tries to jest and ease my beating heart. Surely he must know how much this bugged me. I haven’t known him for a long time, but he doesn’t seem like the type to put someone out of their comfort zone.

**_…_ **

I remain silent.

**_Bold assumption about me. We might both be warriors, but I’d like to think there’s some differences between us._ **

My eyes pop open and I nearly throw myself on the floor trying to sit up. I couldn’t have said that aloud. I’ve learned how to keep my mouth shut over the years. It’s one of the few things I’m good at. 

My heart is racing. I’m grabbing at the armor plate over my chest. My eyes are having trouble focusing on the tiles I’m staring down at. My other hand grabs at the side of the bed, the gauntlets digging into the soft fabrics. Is this truly possible? Is he…

**_You didn’t think there weren’t ‘benefits’ to sharing a soul now, did you?_ **

His voice feels louder for some reason. I clench both eyes shut and grit my teeth, grabbing at my head with one hand. The cold metal in direct contrast to my burning skin.

“You can… hear that?”

**_Yes. Such seems to be a hero’s lot. Nary a moment of privacy._ **

I grin at the way he says the word, so unlike anyone else I’ve heard speak. “You said you’d grant me moments.”

**_Well… That was before I knew what granduer mess you’d drag me into. Now I can’t leave you alone for a second before you fill your head with your own doubts._ **

“You _said_ you wanted to stick with me! To the very end!”

**_Am I not allowed a change of opinion?_ **

I laugh. I actually laugh. A sound that I myself haven’t heard in such a long time. And I cover my mouth when I find myself laughing still.

**_Oh, now what’s wrong? I’m not scaring you too much, am I?_ **

“You scared me every time you decided to speak up.”

**_D-did I!?_ **

His voice cracked when he spoke and it made me wheeze just a little.

**_Aghh, sorry. I’m new to the ‘spiritual wanderer’ venture. Much too used to ‘weary wanderer’ or ‘stupid adventurer.’_ **

I laugh a little more.

**_...Can’t be scaring you too much if you’re giggling like a child with a snuck-in cat._ **

“I’ll get used to it.”

**_You had better. Looks like I’m following you till the end of your days. Which are the end of my days, now._ **

“You _were_ looking for an end to your journey.”

**_I was… And I guess we’ll be looking together._ **

I smile a bit more. The initial shock is already gone. I sit upright and throw my legs over the edge of the bed.

**_But… rest assured, I’m still new to this whole ordeal. Fragmented souls and whatnot… I don’t know a thing about them or how this’ll affect you._ **

I stand upright and hold up both my hands, staring down at the gloved palms.

**_If you’re worried about me and how I feel about it all, just remember that I chose to do this._ **

My fingers curl in and squeeze against my palms. I can feel my eyes narrowing.

**_And even if the others didn’t get to choose, they would’ve done something by now if they were really upset._ **

“Like what?”

**_...Well, uh…_ **

“Are you telling me you can do more talk to me?”

**_I might’ve been tempted to steal your body for a night or two…_ **

The odd statement sent chills through my limbs, making me stiffen up and stop breathing.

**_If only for the nostalgia! I would never do it if it meant you got hurt. I mean, I’m sharing a home with you, I wouldn’t ruin it for the sake of doing so._ **

The strange sensation returns to me. I didn’t make myself stand up, or look at my own palms. That wasn’t me.

**_Yeah, I might’ve tried to do it now, too. But I swear, it won’t ever happen in the middle of a fight. Or any awkward conversations. I’d ask before I did it, and only if you said yes. I’m not pulling fae wings, I promise it would only be if you-_ **

“Ardbert.” I say his name in such a stiff tone.

His voice silences immediately. Yet I can feel his sudden influx of fear. 

**_Yes…?_ **

He speaks finally, after realizing I was waiting for a confirmation that he was listening.

I smile and let my hands drop to my sides. “Your journey isn’t over. And if you ever wanna continue it, feel free.”

I can hear his voice choked up again. A child too shocked to procure even simple words.

**_You… can’t mean that-_ **

“Whenever you’d like.” I start pacing towards the window. The night breeze grows colder as I approach. My boots clack against each tile as I take each step. “If you’re sticking with me, you better pull your weight.”

All that fills the void in my head is the winds of the night just outside the window. My body leans against the railing and my head turns down to look at the flowers planted below. The fresh scent of the orchards carries up to the window and continues on in the night breeze. Lilac petals and leaves from the stems and trees are dragged off among the stars. And I can hear his voice grow louder.

My arms cross over each other and my eyes close. 

“My thanks.” His voice speaks. “It’s been a century since I’ve had a friend like you.” His tears slip. “Someone so willing to give and take for those they care to protect.” He ducks his head and a pitifully joyful smile. “I swear, I could be looking in a mirror. And I’d never know.” 

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this the night I finished Shadowbringers and I was legit crying the whole time because I was torturing myself by playing 'Tomorrow and Tomorrow' as background music. I think I actually published this that same night. Speaks to how much I APPRECIATE THE IDIOT WARRIOR GHOST BOY that they gave us. Now let's pray he comes back for future patches in some magical resurrecting-his-dead-body kinda way, idk i can only speculate and hope lmao


End file.
